FederalNewsRadio.com - Purpose of Comments statement Click to show

Hubbard Radio, LLC encourages site users to express their opinions by posting comments. Our goal is to maintain a civil dialogue in which readers feel comfortable. At times, the comment boards following articles, blog posts and other content can descend to personal attacks. Please do not engage in such behavior here. We encourage your thoughtful comments which:

Have a positive and constructive tone

Are on topic, clear and to-the-point

Are respectful toward others and their opinions

Hubbard Radio, LLC reserves the right to remove comments which do not conform to these criteria.

You are reading comments on the story:

The Office of Personnel Management is changing
how it refers to the operating status of the government. Now when federal offices are closed due to weather or other emergencies, OPM will use the terminology, "Federal offices are closed. Federal employees required to
work should follow their agency's policies."

The language is still confusing as there are many 'telework-ready' federal employees who are not considered 'teleworkers' because they are not on a telework agreement OR because their telework agreement does not specify that they are to work on inclement weather or other days when the federal government offices are closed for an emergency.
The language should specify that ALL telework-ready employees are expected to work unless otherwise notified. Furthermore, federal agencies should be required to deploy employees in a telework-ready status when a known event is on the horizon. For instance, the government knew about Sandy in advance. There is no reason that the thousands of federal employees who work with laptops and are telework-ready weren't required to take their laptops home and be prepared to work from home.
However, this does not resolve the situation where a storm, such as Sandy, has gone through and knocked out the power to many - which is why the government offices were closed in the first place. So, there needs to be clarity. When a storm has gone through and knocked out power to many, the federal government should be closed - period. How are federal managers supposed to determine who has power and who doesn't? The only way to get around that is for supervisors to call the power company to see if there is a known service outage at an employee's residence. Yeah. That's not going to happen.

OK..IMO there is something to oversimplifying. OPM must distinguish, using verbiage used in personnel regulations when it comes to duty, such as essential or non-essential; emergency or non-emergency personnel. They must address teleworkers too. They also need to make sure agencies are identifying the same way so that EVERYONE is on the same page. The problem is, there isnt that many closures that occur so when OPM does make the announcement, I think most have to recall what happened the time before-which could equate to perhaps being a year before. As always, govt regs are too vague. When vagueness occurs, it leaves agency heads having to make a final decision based on their interpretation. So for instance, when we were given our potential pink slips last year, we were titled one of 2 categories and it seems a different language was used and it escapes me at the moment. The point is, use the same language throughout everything that revolves around personnel. We are either essential or non-essentional; emergency or non-emergency; or whatever should be used to differentiate those folks that must come in, come hell or high water.

The most frustrating and confusing are military bases around DC, but outside the beltway. The officials claim that the base commander decides, not OPM. Herein lies the baloney! Most base commanders reside in mansions on the base. So what do you think their decisions will be? Rarily do we have a base closure. If we do, the message and info is looney tune. Many employees and contractors are stifled with lack of guidance and info.. even on days of crisis. No one cares to monitor what is happening and base commanders are not held responsible for anything. So you have thousands of workers flying around dangerous commutes, bridges closed so it makes things harder, while the OPM already announced federal govt closed. Not us! They need to establish WHO the OPM directs and if they leave the decision to the base commander, THAT person should be held responsible to ALL worker commute accidents and additional crisis. Schools are closed, but we can't brings our kids to work! Our only teleworkers are the elite and good ole boys! To add to the lunacy, they reduce the number of gate guards which triples the traffic flow entering and leaving the bases. Someone needs to address this soon!